


Call of Duty

by wendelah1



Series: Demons [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-11 13:51:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15316875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1
Summary: Karen Kosseff gets a surprise visit from Dana Scully. Takes place during season four, after "Demons," but before "Gethsemane."





	Call of Duty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyryk (s_k)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/gifts).



Karen Kosseff was comfortable with silence. Perhaps it was because she was the only child of two reserved, bookish parents. Maybe it was the long hours she had spent at the public library waiting to be picked up after school. Or, perhaps it was simply her nature. In any case, once she had finished her training, she had resolved to let her clients approach uncomfortable topics at their own pace. After all, a therapist could discern a great deal from what people didn't say. What they didn't want to talk about could reveal as much or more as what they did. Her supervisors hadn't disagreed, not exactly.

"Karen, you're going to be a fine therapist. But sometimes, your clients will need more direction than you will be inclined to provide them. They will need your guidance to make progress," her last mentor had said. It had taken her awhile to see the wisdom in that statement. 

Dana Scully was a case in point. The last time she had come to Karen's office, Dana been in the middle of a difficult case. She had left her partner to continue the investigation alone, ostensibly to be checked out by her doctor. This had made sense once Dana confided that she had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Karen had been shocked by the news; she could only imagine how Dana must have felt when she'd been told.

That session had not gone well, at least from Karen's perspective. Dana was highly intelligent, highly educated, and a bit of a loner. She was a strong person who didn't find it easy to talk about her emotional life. She preferred to keep her private life, private. Though she had spent the entire hour talking around the real issue—her cancer diagnosis— Karen had been reluctant to put pressure on her. Unfortunately, Dana hadn't come in for the suggested followup appointment. Today's session was an emergency slot, which Karen felt gave her some leeway. Maybe this time Dana would be ready for some real work. 

"Why are you here today, Dana?" Karen said. 

"The last time I saw you," Dana said slowly, "we talked about my vision."

 _She is me_. "Yes, I remember." How could she forget? "There was a young woman, whose murder you and Agent Mulder were investigating. You said that you had seen her—but it wasn't at the crime scene?" At that time, Dana had speculated that her "vision"—whatever it might have been—was due to emotional distress. This had made sense to Karen.

Dana nodded, her eyes filling with tears. "Yes." 

Karen waited while Dana composed herself. "You'd told me that she had a message for you, but you didn't know what it was." Dana nodded again. "Do you know now?" Karen said, handing Dana a tissue.

Dana dabbed at her eyes. "Yes. I believe so." She folded the kleenex and held it in her lap. "My doctor ran tests." She blinked several times in succession. "The news wasn't good. My cancer has spread, more rapidly than my doctor had thought it would." 

_Oh no._ "Dana, I'm so sorry." This was a tragedy, something that shouldn't be happening to anyone, let alone this young woman with so much to live for, so much to contribute. She scooted her chair closer and put her hand on Dana's shoulder. "How are you feeling?" 

"I feel fine."

She didn't look fine. She looked sad and exhausted. Karen tried again. "I meant about the news that your cancer has metastasized."

Dana considered that. "I suppose...I haven't really had a chance to process it."

Maybe that was too direct a question. Karen tried again. "How did your family take the news?" Dana's father was deceased, as was her sister, but her mother was still living. She had two brothers as well.

Dana looked away and shifted in her seat. "I, I haven't told them yet." 

That was the opposite of what Karen had hoped to hear. "What about Agent Mulder? A.D. Skinner?" 

Each time the answer was the same: No, she had not. At a time of crisis, Dana was isolating herself from every possible source of support. Somehow Karen was going to have to help Dana find another way forward. 

"I'd planned to meet with the assistant director on Monday, but something happened. Over the weekend." She unfolded the tissue and blew her nose. "I'm sorry. I just need a minute." 

"Take your time." Karen resisted the urge to check her watch. If they ran over, they ran over. This was too important.

"Early Saturday morning, I received a phone call from Agent Mulder." Karen could see Dana shifting back into her professional persona as she recounted the story. "He was in a motel room in Providence, Rhode Island. He had no memory of how he'd gotten there, which was disturbing enough. Then he told me he was covered in blood—someone else's blood."

At the phrase, "covered in blood," Karen found herself gripping the arms of her chair to steady herself. "Is Agent Mulder all right?"

"Yes. I believe he is, for now."

That wasn't exactly reassuring. 

With increasing alarm, Karen listened as Scully gave a full accounting of her weekend with Mulder, and their subsequent meeting with A.D. Skinner. According to Dana, Agent Mulder had driven alone to Providence in order to undergo a bizarre, entirely unorthodox medical procedure. He had allowed a quack to drill a hole through his skull—twice—in less than 24 hours! Was the man insane? Three persons who had undergone the exact same procedure had subsequently committed suicide. At least he wasn't her client. Sorting that mess out would be some other clinician's headache. A.D. Skinner had placed Agent Mulder on administrative leave, pending medical and psychiatric evaluations.

"You still haven't told me how you're feeling," Karen said, searching Dana's face. "About your illness, about what Mulder did and what you felt you had to do as a consequence of his actions. And, Dana, I feel have to say this: I can't understand why you haven't told anyone how sick you are?" 

Dana flushed, whether with embarrassment or anger, Karen wasn't sure. Maybe both. She would need to back off again, choose her words more carefully. 

"I didn't tell my mother because I couldn't face her. I couldn't tell her that she was going to lose another daughter. In a way, I did tell Mulder, at least I thought I had. When I told him about my vision. He said he knew what I was afraid of, that he was afraid of the same thing."

Karen was puzzled. "What did he mean by that? You said you haven't told him about your test results?"

"No. That conversation took place much much later. As I was getting ready to sleep, Mulder came by my apartment. He wanted me to examine Harold Spuller."

Should she recognize that name? It probably didn't matter. "Why?"

"He had a theory, about what the other people who'd had visions like mine all had in common." 

Now other people were having these visions? "Which was what?"

"Mulder called my vision a 'death omen.'" 

That was bleak. "Dana, I don't understand." 

"He told me that every person who'd had this "death omen" was dying. He wanted to know if the same thing was true of Harold." 

For pity's sake. Death omens? Was this the FBI or an episode of _The Outer Limits_? "Was that when you told him about your vision?"

"No. Not until after the case was closed." Dana blinked again, and dabbed at her eyes. "In a way, I'm sorry that I did."

"Why is that?" 

At first, Dana wouldn't meet her eyes. She stared down at her hands, still clasping the damp tissue, then up at the macrame and wood sculpture hanging by Karen's desk.

Karen waited. They were getting to the crux of the problem.

"Because... he got angry at me," Dana said softly. "He said...I wasn't being honest with him. That by withholding information, I was working against him."

"What you're saying is that he made it all about himself." No wonder Dana was so distraught. How could he? He must have known Dana wasn't doing well. He worked alongside her every day. He must have seen the changes: her obvious fatigue, the way her clothes now hung from her thin frame, the dark circles under her eyes that no amount of makeup could mask. She was _his partner_. 

Dana's expression didn't change. "Yes. Of course he did."

"How does that make you feel?" 

"I feel...sad, I suppose." Another long pause. "And disappointed," she admitted.

"Why is that, do you think?"

"Because I had believed that I could count on him. And now I know that I can't."

"Why do you assume..." 

"Because his quest means more to him than I do. But I'm coming to terms with that."

"How?" This sounded like a major breach of trust to her.

Dana wadded up her used tissue and tossed it into the waste basket. She sat up straighter, smoothed her skirt and lifted her chin. 

"Mulder is convinced that my cancer is a direct result of what was done to me during my abduction. He'll never stop trying to find the men who did this to me."

The man _is_ an FBI agent. "Dana, when you told Mulder about the vision, did he ask you then about the results of your tests?"

"Yes, he did." 

Karen waited. 

Dana swallowed hard. "I told him the doctor said I was fine." 

"But you aren't 'fine,' are you?" Karen said, as gently as she could. "Do you know why you told him otherwise? " 

"I suppose it was the same reason that I haven't told my mother. I couldn't face him."

Okay, time was running out and someone had to say it. "You couldn't face him—or you couldn't face the truth?"

~/~/~

"Thank you, Karen. I'll call you after I've talked with my mother." Karen wasn't so sure about that—the denial ran strong in this one. "I promise," Dana reassured her. 

After she left, Karen closed the door and leaned against it. Thank goodness, it was nearly five o'clock.

Mulder's grief and anger wouldn't break his spirit, of that, Dana seemed certain. After his latest misadventure, Karen could only hope she was right. Dana believed that her premature death would fuel his search for "the truth." In that respect, she felt she could count on him, unconditionally. Fox Mulder wouldn't quit until he brought those men to justice—or died trying. It wasn't a legacy Karen would have chosen—for either of them—but it was the best currently on offer. 

This left her in a quandary. During their session, Dana had spent nearly as much time talking about her partner as she had about herself. Going forward, Karen would have to keep in mind how important this man was to Dana. Whatever his faults, this wasn't a relationship that Dana was going to walk away from, nor should she be expected to, given the circumstances. 

The problem was that Justice was an abstraction. It wouldn't provide physical comfort or emotional support. It wouldn't keep anyone warm at night. Dana needed her friends and her family, now and in the difficult days ahead. She needed to talk to them about what was happening without any more delay. So far, Dana had committed to talk to her mother about her prognosis. At least it was a start.

Obviously, A.D. Skinner was going to have to be told; however, Dana wanted to wait until Agent Mulder was reinstated. If she went on medical leave now, she had argued, it would be far too easy to shut down the X-Files division. Mulder's pet project. His passion, Dana had called it.

"He's going to need his work more than ever...once I'm gone." 

What Dana seemed to prepared to accept from Mulder wasn't what she had assumed a young woman would want, what she, Karen, would want if she were dying. But it wasn't her life, it was Dana's, to live as _she_ saw fit. It would not be easy, but Karen was resolved to help her do just that.


End file.
